Few such groups survive: depictions of St John resting his head on Christ’s shoulder. The majority of them were made between about 1300 and 1350 for convents in the Swabian-Alemannic regions. The group in Frankfurt is from the Dominican Adelhausen…

Crucifixes – depictions of Christ nailed to the cross – are the central pictorial theme in the Christian religion: as enduring reminders of the sacrifice of his death. They number among the most important mobile items of decoration in Medieval…

Like so many ivory reliefs, this panel was also once part of a book cover. It illustrates the connection between the Christian Holy Communion and Christ’s sacrifice of his own life. It shows Christ on the cross with his mother, Mary, and his…

In 1913, a spectacular purchase was made for the Liebieghaus: the Rimini Altar. It earned that adjective not only on account of its high artistic quality, but also because it was one of the most extensive and best-preserved figural ensembles made…

Inscribed on back of loincloth: G.S.The dead Christ is nailed to the cross with three nails and has his arms stretched upwards and only slightly to both sides. Of the original crucifix ensemble, the cross has been lost but a skull with…

This bronze crucifix is one of a series of small crucifixes executed in the workshop of Giovanni Bologna. The delicate, bearded Christ is nailed to the cross with arms outstretched and one foot over the other. A barely perceptible torsion animates…

The dying Christ was fixed to the cross (which has not survived) with four nails. Despite his torment, his posture conveys an almost dancing, floating lightness. The proportions of the head as well as the distended body are anatomically distorted…

This relief depicts the celebration of the Christian Sacrifice of the Mass. In the centre, behind the altar, stands the priest, facing the faithful, before the implements of the Mass: chalice, paten and liturgical books. The schola, or choir of…

These four impressive figures were part of a scene of the lamentation of the dead Christ after his removal from the cross. The group is incomplete, but can be reconstructed. In keeping with the Biblical story as well as pictorial tradition, a…

This painted alabaster relief of the dying Christ held by an angel and accompanied by God the Father and the dove that symbolizes the Holy Spirit is a major work of the Liebieghaus’s Medieval collection. Not only is it consummately rendered in the…

One of the prime examples of small-scale Medieval sculpture in the Liebieghaus is this ivory sculpture of the seated Virgin with the Christ Child. Ivory was a popular and frequently used material in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Paris…

The Swabian sculptor Leonhard Kern was an important artist of the early Baroque period. He travelled to Italy in 1609 and returned to Germany in 1614, settling soon afterwards in Schwäbisch Hall. He probably chose to live there because the…

Figural groups with the dead Christ deposed from the cross and lying on the lap of his grieving mother Mary were popular in the fourteenth century. The English word for them is pietà, the Italian word for »pity«, whereas the German word,…

Figural groups with the dead Christ deposed from the cross and lying on the lap of his grieving mother Mary were popular in the fourteenth century. The English word for them is pietà, the Italian word for »pity«, whereas the German word,…

Late Gothic sculptures of the Christ Child are numerous and exist in various forms. They owe their existence to the increasing veneration of the Christ Child by the Franciscan and Dominican orders in the thirteenth century. Figural depictions of…

In the late Middle Ages, St Anne with her daughter Mary and grandson Jesus Christ represented one of the most common pictorial themes, often as the centre of the Holy Kinship, surrounded by Anne’s husbands, daughters, sons-in-law and…

Accompanied by two women, Joseph of Arimathea and St John are wrapping the dead Christ in a shroud. The ladder still leans against the cross: the deposition has only just occurred. Beside Christ is a sarcophagus alluding to his entombment. The…

God the Father, crowned with the papal tiara, is showing his dead son Christ, marked by the sufferings of the Passion. He presents the corpse to the viewer as a priest hands the faithful the host during Communion: just as the cleric does not touch…

This devotional image of the Virgin and Child is embellished with a frame based on classical decorative forms. The frame has more than an architectural function: it is part of the image itself, for the Infant Christ is standing on its lower rail…

This statue of the Virgin modelled from clay is representative of a whole series of Medieval sculptures in clay in the Liebieghaus. The majority of them were produced in Lower Bavaria, where Landshut and Straubing were important centres of clay…

The mobile sculptural objects surviving from the Salian era (1024–1125) are largely limited to crucifixes and sculptures of the Virgin Enthroned with the Christ Child. The figure shown here was executed around 1050, probably in Koblenz, Trier, or…

This figure of the Virgin with the Christ Child on her lap, worked completely in the round, resembles the Hospice Madonna – a work older by approximately four centuries – in that it illustrates two central principles of Christianity: Mary is the…

This flat, relief-like figure originally served as the »house Madonna« on the façade of the Collegiate Curia of the Neumünster (»New Cathedral«) in Würzburg. As is so often the case, there are no written sources to indicate who made the sculpture…